Keith Emerson

Celebrated personages have been dropping like flies lately, from that Oscar-winning savior of airplanes George Kennedy to Sir Ken Adam, the man who designed the greatest James Bond sets and a war room made for fighting. As friend of the Recorder Fred Pelzer tweeted at me, “We’re hitting peak baby boomers. It’s going to be this way for the next while.”

Two deaths in the past week especially stood out to me as the product of being raised on the rock ‘n’ roll my parents and my uncles. Sir George Martin, born in 1926, and Keith Emerson, born in 1944, were two musical figures who could both be considered the smartest guys in the room: they were men of technical brilliance and great creativity that outshone many. They used their gifts in very different and rewarding ways.